


death don't mean a thing

by grahamcockroach



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, DEATH AND DROWNING TW, Death, M/M, Soulmates AU, angst and pain lol, meet soulmates in the afterlife au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28537524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grahamcockroach/pseuds/grahamcockroach
Summary: Roger died in 1976, now he wonders the afterlife, going through plains of post-existence just as he would in life, wondering when his soulmate will join him.
Relationships: John Deacon/Roger Taylor
Comments: 19
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> lol thanks for clicking after reading the shitty fucking summary. 
> 
> MASSIVE DEATH AND DROWNING TW IN CASE YOU DIDN'T SEE THE TAG!!!!

Roger couldn’t quite remember dying. He could remember what he did that day, he could remember the people he saw, he was pretty sure he remembered how he did, but he couldn’t remember the exact moment his soul left his physical body. He remembered each painful moment leading up to it, the panic of desperately trying to get out of the water but never being able to reach the surface, the bright blue and white surface only becoming further and further away, his breath being punched out of him, the last bits of his voice floating away from him, to the top and popping.

He eventually stopped being able to move, he became so cold, the last thing he saw was his blue fingers, his last thought regretting the person he’d been his whole life as to die like this. It was so fast, one minute he was going to refill his drink, the next he was pushed off the solid ground and nobody noticed him desperately trying to break free from the weeds that trapped his legs. The feeling of his life slipping away like that he would never forget. 

His moment of death was clouded by intense panic and fear and pain, the next thing he knew he woke up on a floating island, an island of which was the main stage of a reoccurring dream he had for as long as he could remember. 

He had plenty of time to think about it, though. He died at 27, about a week after his birthday. Usually, people nowadays lived to their 70s, 80s, and if they were lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you feel about it) to their 90s or into the triple digits. His soulmate wouldn’t join him until they died as well, so he had a lot of time to think, jump through plains of post-existence and meet the weirdest brands of people. 

He fondly remembered trying to explain an electric guitar to a lute player from 1496. 

He met people who were with and without their soulmates, he met some who married others in life, convinced they were their soulmate, but when they died that wasn’t the case. That made him a little happy he never married, he hoped his soulmate wouldn’t be disappointed to see him instead of their spouse when they died. 

For now, he just jumped through sometimes dreamlike, sometimes lucid worlds to pass the eternity he had. Some worlds felt almost the same as when he was alive, but his body was the main difference. When he was alive, he had weight, he had to upkeep himself, he had to eat, drink and have medical care to drag himself to the next day; now he was like a feather, moving his body was rarely difficult, sometimes he was weightless. Roger still ate and slept and drank, but now it was just for fun. He didn’t need to breathe, but he continued to do so just as a force of habit. He could change his appearance when he put enough focus into it, not change to be a different person, rather himself at different ages, himself in different memories. He had been dead for a few years at that point, but it still needed a lot of getting used to.

He tried not to think about what he left behind. Him and his band had only barely a year ago taken off and began working on a follow-up, he’d already written and recorded one song he was really proud of, little did he know that was the last thing he would record. At least they had that last track to put on the album and remember him by,  _ would they want to remember him? Did they look back on his life fondly? Did they believe in an afterlife? What if I’m not dead, I’m just in a coma and there is no afterlife, no soulmates?  _ Roger hoped, on one hand that they went on, got a new drummer and kept living their dreams, drummers were easily replaced after all; on the other hand, he wished they’d not replace him,  _ they wouldn’t want to replace their friend like that, right?  _

_ God, even me fucking dying couldn’t get rid of these thoughts. What a wonderful existence.  _

__ Thinking about his friends hurt too much to bear sometimes. Thinking about his mother and sister made him feel worse, he wasn’t a father but he couldn’t imagine having to bury his child. He hoped they were well, using his royalty money well, it was the least he could do to repay them for being so stupid as to die so young.

Did they look through his notebooks after he died? Would they try to record any of them? God, it would be so embarrassing to have them look through everything, when they die and meet him again he probably wouldn’t be able to look them in the eyes, how do you look into the eyes of someone who's seen your metaphorical cum sock? Did the cats ever realize he was never coming back?

As far as he knew, there was no way to look back onto the living world from where he was now, so he just had to guess. He’d ask all these questions when those that could answer died as well.

Roger knew from the moment he accepted the fact that he was dead that he wasn’t going to sit around for another 60 years waiting for his soulmate to die, so he became a vagrant of sorts. He didn’t really need a house, not having to eat or sleep, never getting tired or anything, so it was really just endless exploration. 

He yearned to meet his soulmate. Not that he wanted their soulmate to die, death was a rather painful and traumatic experience, he hoped it at least was painless, unlike his own. Maybe his soulmate would be born centuries after him, those flukes could happen, once he met a woman who lived through the Shang Dynasty whose soulmate died in World War One. He often wondered if he’d ever met his soulmate in life.

Every pair of soulmates had their own little realm, tailored specifically to them, but they were only created when the pair was dead: he learnt that from an elderly couple who both died within a week of each other. He wondered what his realm would look like. Some realms were more grounded in reality, some were the wildest fantasy settings he could imagine, some were reminiscent of places Roger had only seen drawings of in history books. 

On his vagrant lifestyle, he did enjoy it, he loved meeting new people and seeing new things, and he would love to explore the post-existence plains with his soulmate, but he couldn’t help feeling out of place, no place to call  _ his. _

Either way, if his soulmate was to die 50 years after him or 2962 years after him, he wasn’t getting bored anytime soon. He learnt dead languages, ate food he hadn’t even known existed in life, dressed in those impossible clothes you’d see in high fashion shows just because he could, and dated around with others whose soulmates weren’t dead yet. 

The yearning was beginning to become tiring, though.

***

John woke up feeling disoriented. He went to bed in his room, the curtains drawn and tightly wrapped in his duvet, but now he was in a cradle formed by foliage, birds and crickets sounding too clear in his room with the window closed. 

_ Vivid fucking dream, huh?  _ He laid there with his eyes closed, feeling the smooth grass around him. When he didn’t wake up and his senses only sharpened, he wondered if this was a dream. 

He opened his eyes and sat up. He was on a tiny peninsula, him in a little circular clearing of pine trees, he could see a calm lake beyond the few trees. 

His body felt…  _ different,  _ normally when he sat up from bed, he had to throw the weight of his torso forward and have his legs help pull himself up. John felt at peace in a way he never knew. 

The freshly dead man looked at himself and immediately noticed something  _ very  _ off. 

He was wearing the clothes he wore the day Roger died.

He immediately recognized them. He never wore them after that day. It would feel wrong too. He kept them folded in the bottom drawer of his closet, folded that very day, never opening that drawer since. It had been  _ years,  _ no,  _ decades,  _ since he’d seen them last. 

_ It’d been decades since he’d seen Roger,  _ he thought, the same pain that inevitably grew in his chest when he thought of his friend came upon him. 

Secondly, he was…  _ younger?  _ His arms were smoother-looking, he was a little thinner,  _ what did his hair look like?  _ He brought his hand to his head, it was just as it had been when he was 25. The same age he was when Roger stopped aging.  _ Why did he keep thinking about Roger?  _ He always tried to hold back thinking about Roger since it happened, the hurt was too much to bear most of the time. 

He stood up to look around. It smelled like fruit, a fruit which he couldn’t quite identify, but it was sweet. 

The first thing he noticed was movement in the water, just a few feet away from the grassy shore. It started with a few bubbles rising to the surface, then it was bigger bubbles and slight thrashing, evident from how stirred up the water was getting. The commotion slowly moved closer to the shore, John felt himself to be paralized. 

He started to see the figure under the surface. It was a man with pale skin and long blond hair, in what was probably a white suit. John would never forget that sight. Roger being dragged out of the water in those clothes, vines and weeds wrapped tightly around his one ankle, soaking wet and dead. John would do anything to get that image out of his head. He would never forgive himself for being drunk while his best friend was drowning. 

This time, he could still help Roger, even if it was just a dream.

He snapped into action, running into the water and grabbing Roger’s arm, pulling him back to where he could reach the ground. 

Roger stood up and out of the water, grabbing onto John’s shoulders with both hands and coughing his lungs out. 

“Hey, it’s fine, it’s fine just cough it out,” John tried to calm him down, rubbing his back as Roger worked through his coughing fit.

Roger knew that he couldn’t die, but being in that situation again made him panic and forget. When his breath finally became stable again, he spoke, “thank you.” was all he could say.

Roger loosened his grip on John’s shoulders and stepped away. “John?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowing when he asked. John nodded.

Before either could say anything, their eyes locked. They both swore they could see a little shine in each other’s iris’s. They felt more complete than they ever had before, they were soulmates, and they didn’t need to say anything about it to know.

“You’re dead? It didn’t hurt, did it?” Roger questioned. 

John shook his head, “no, I was sleeping. I guess I am dead if I’m seeing you.”

Roger was ready to unleash an endless line of questions,  _ what year is it? How is everyone? Who takes care of the cats? What did you do to my body? Do people remember me?  _ But he held back.

“Well, I’m sorry you’re dead, but I am happy to see you again.”


	2. prequel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a little piece of john's life after roger passes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not beta'd and barely edited as usual lol. soon i hope to have a poly queen afterlife thing?? i love them i wnat them to have a good time and exist forever in their own little world. so uh look forward to that if its ur thing.

“He’s dead, Sir, stop trying to get back there,” the doctor blocking the door to the ambulance assured. John didn’t care, he wanted to believe they were lying, he wanted to think it was a bad joke, even just to see Roger for the last time outside of a casket.

A part of John knew he was gone the moment he saw him being dragged onto the shore, his eyes closed and lips parted. He looked too peaceful to have died in such a way, his last moments spent thrashing around and desperately trying to free his leg from the weeds it had been caught in when he fell. 

He was still drunk when he was shaking in the back of Brian’s car, refusing to get out without a fight. 

It didn’t quite hit him that Roger was dead.

John felt like he was in a trance going through his life after that. He didn’t feel anything, he didn’t enjoy anything, in fact most things just made him feel tired or filled him with grief. 

He didn’t cry, the only people he saw cry about it were Roger’s mother and sister. Not even Freddie shed a tear, at least around other people. 

He barely left his house, for fear of worthless excuses for reporters getting at him and asking about it, neither did he pick up newspapers or anything, he didn’t want to see anybody speaking about it: almost as if seeing those sources speaking about it would confirm it more than it already was confirmed.  _ Apparently seeing him be dragged out the water, be at his funeral and watch him be buried wasn’t enough confirmation of it,  _ he often thought to himself.

Sometimes he would call the other three- well, two, he wasn’t used to saying the other  _ two  _ in reference to his bandmates. They never called for long, one of them would always eventually become choked up and had to hang up.

***

“Would you like to go through his house? Take out anything he wouldn’t want his mum to see?” Roger’s mothers voice rang through his living room.

“Yeah, I can do that,” John answered, making a great effort to keep his voice monotone. He hadn’t cried yet and he wasn’t going to cry to his dead friend’s mother. 

“Ok, I’ve got the keys, Clare and I have been feeding his cats and cleaning for them but not beyond that. I’ll drop off the keys tomorrow. Thanks for doing this.” she said, sounding like if she spoke for much longer she would cry as well. 

“No problem. Would it be ok if Brian and Freddie went as well?”

“Yes, that’s ok. Thank you, John.”

“Thank you as well. Bye,” she hung up before she heard.

She dropped off the key through the letterbox in John’s door the next morning, leaving before he even saw her car.

***

There was still a grocery list in Roger’s handwriting on the counter.

On the table by the door was a bag with a new clean black dress shirt in it. Must’ve just had it cleaned.

His drum set he used to practice alone on still had drumsticks on them, ready to be picked up and played.

Everything in Roger’s house reminded him of how much Roger had left behind. Every misplaced paper, the still-dirty dishes in the sink, the cats meowing when John left a room without giving them attention, the little pile of books on the table beside the couch with Roger’s reading glasses resting on top of them. Every single thing he looked at threw gasoline at the already raging fire that was his grief. 

At least when he was at home, he could distract himself, put on music so loud he couldn’t think, find things to work on during every waking hour or drink, here the knowledge that Roger was dead was inescapable. 

Almost hidden from the rest of the house, behind every other room and tucked away behind a wall in the kitchen, was the stairs to the second floor. Roger’s room was up there. 

The hall was narrow, but completely full of photos. Some were framed, others were just printer-paper taped to the wall. His room was at the end of the hall, the biggest room on the second floor. Roger liked it because it had a view of his backyard, and the garden he worked on during his off days. 

Roger had a record player in his room, right near his unmade bed. Brian and Freddie were still downstairs, so he decided to see what he last listened to.  _ What’s the last song he heard? Was it any good? _

__ On the turntable was still a single 45, _ it was so like Roger to be messy and leave them on the table.  _ He hesitated to look at it, in a way with every bit of his house he looked at, Roger was more dead, there was less and less of Roger to see, Roger’s existence faded more and more into the past.

He walked up to the table enough to see the little sleeve and the letters on the record. The sleeve was faded and a little scratched, Roger probably bought it many years ago. 

_ The Boxer-Simon and Garfunkel _

__ He should’ve known better than to turn it on and drop the needle. 

He went to sit on the ground, leaning against the bed. His legs were already too shaky and unstable to use.

Brian must have heard him fall to the floor, because the next time he looked at the open door, Brian was standing there with his hands in his pockets.

“Hi,” John uttered weakly. For the first time in a very long time, he felt the telltale burning in his throat and chest, and tears started to erode his vision. Brian sighed and came to sit beside him, the song was louder than his footsteps. John clenched his jaw to stop himself from crying, the tightness in his chest like a tight coil threatening to unfurl at any moment.

Soon, Freddie appeared at the door as well, joining the other two. Both men sat on either side of John.

When the last chords of the soft guitar stopped and the record's only sound was the quiet skipping, John finally released his tears. He was sure all three of them were staring at the green shag carpet,  _ “it’s like grass in my room! I got it because I found it funny. Isn’t it?”  _ Roger’s voice reverberated in his head, from when they were talking about when Roger first bought the house less than a year prior.

He didn’t know whose hand it was, but one of them had their hand on his back. The tiny sliver of comfort would never make up for what happened, but it was something. 

The coil in his chest became too much to bear and his crying intensified.

Through all his wheezing, tears, shaking and hyperventilating he spoke, “he was afraid of drowning, y’know,” his own words sent him into another frenzy of hysterical crying into his hands. What he said seemed to push the other two over the edge as well, as the only thing he could hear over his own tears was sniffling from the other two.

_ It wasn’t supposed to go like this. _

__ They were finally getting the publicity they had wanted, finally had near world-wide recognition, they could finally afford to not all live on top of eachother in one tiny flat, Roger was meant to be a performer with the huge crowds they got on that last tour. 

Roger didn’t deserve to die to one of his worst fears at such a young age. Roger still had so many songs left to record, and probably a million more that never made it to paper. He had notebooks upon notebooks with riffs, random lyrics, keys, little tunes, so much of it he would never see be brought to life.

Roger was so full of life, he was so energetic all the time; he was so lovely to be around. John remembered one article from maybe two years previous, where it said “he lit up a room with his smile,” a rather generic line but he could not think of a more truthful application than to Roger. 

There was not a feeling he loathed more than knowing how much potential, how much life Roger had left to live, how much he brightened the world around him, being gone so quickly. Waking up to the realization that he was gone was soul-crushing, and John was sure it was for everyone who knew him.

John didn’t know if an afterlife existed, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted his own consciousness to live on after his body was unable to support him anymore, but he hoped there was one for Roger. 

He sat on the floor there for a while.

His mind chose the best possible time to remember conversations he’d had with Roger in his room. One of the last times they got together they talked about the possibility of them having children in the future, they were both single at the time, but it was on Roger’s mind as he approached his 27th birthday. John secretly thought Roger would have made a great father, to make up for the fact that his father, in Roger’s words, was a piece of shit. 

They confided things in each other they never spoke a word of to anyone else.

He didn’t know what he, or the rest of them would do without Roger.

He always felt that the four of them were almost meant to be together like that, they formed a balance he had never felt in a group of people before. And now that balance was completely thrown off.

He hoped Freddie and Brian were taking it better than him, he doubted it, but he still hoped. 

__

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading (evil laughs). i might make a sequel or expand on this, but i feel for what this fic is supposed to be it wouldn't be as good to drag it out more.


End file.
